


once upon a time in Malta

by BeStillMySlashyHeart



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25197472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeStillMySlashyHeart/pseuds/BeStillMySlashyHeart
Summary: After their first separation in the centuries of knowing each other, Joe and Nicky, still Yusuf and Nicolo at that point, found each other again in Malta.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 30
Kudos: 1160





	once upon a time in Malta

It was Nicolo’s fifth time in Malta in half as many years and it was the fifth time he’d cursed his former self (and Yusuf, except he could never curse Yusuf) for being maddeningly nonspecific. 

_Meet me in Malta_

It was all they’d had time for as they’d been pulled apart by opposing armies. NIcolo had sworn that they’d never find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield again, not after the way they’d met, but he had been helpless to stop it. Andy and Quynh had taken off, eager to explore newly discovered lands, and Yusuf was lost to him. It had been over four years since that day. Four years since they’d agreed to meet in Malta without deciding a place or a date. 

It had taken Nicolo almost two just to leave the position he’d found himself in. He could have left earlier, he supposed, but people would have died. Good people. His people. Though he hadn’t thought of himself as Genovese in a long time, when confronted by a woman who resembled his sister (as best he could remember her at least) and spoke his tongue, he was helpless to resist. They had needed his help, so he had stayed and given it.

He could only pray that helping them had not cost him Yusuf. They hadn’t been separated for more than a few days in the four centuries before this and being without him had wounded him far more than any weapon could. With every trip to this island, each trip lasting longer and longer, the hope he carried with him grew smaller and smaller. 

This trip last nearly two months before Nicolo could not take it anymore. He spent every day wandering the streets, searching the crowds for that familiar face. The crushing defeat he felt every night when he went to sleep alone was weighing on him. He needed to leave, needed to be free of the hope that plagued him on this island.

He wandered the pier, waiting for the other ship to disembark before his could be readied to leave. Strictly speaking, he didn’t need to be here for hours yet but he could not bear to linger anywhere else and so he hovered. His feet traced a familiar path up and down the wooden planks, the other visitors well enough used to dodging his movements that he hardly noticed them. 

The crowd ebbed as the ship emptied, the familiar sounds of his ship being readied filled the air, and two warm hands clasped his shoulders in a familiar gesture. Nicolo could not even spare a thought to be startled, the relief was so overwhelming.

“ _Nicolo_ ,” Yusuf exhaled. Nicolo turned in his grasp. He hesitated only a breath to take in the man’s familiar features before he was pressing himself in close, his arms going around Yusuf’s waist as he buried his face in his neck. Yusuf clutched him tightly with a strong arm around his shoulders. 

“ _Sei qui_.” Nicolo closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before forcing himself away. There was only so much they could get away with here on the docks. Yusuf’s fingers trailed along his arms as he stepped back, his reluctance to let them part written in his every muscle. Nicolo ached to fall back into his arms but they were already getting looks from those around them and he didn’t feel like dying today. He jerked his head towards the town. “Come. I can show you to the hotel.” He’d already relinquished his room but that was a small matter. 

They walked side by side through the town until they reached the busy hotel on the far side. It was large enough that they could get lost in the crowd but far enough away from the busy town center that there was a small degree of privacy. His room was still available and it was only a small matter of Yusuf claiming his own. They wouldn’t need it, of course, but appearances mattered. 

How they kept their hands to themselves as they waited at the desk and climbed the stairs, Nicolo did not know, but the second the door closed behind them, their bags were on the floor and Yusuf’s arms were around him again.

“I’ve missed you,” Nicolo confessed as they held each other tight. Neither one of them moved to do anything more, both more than content to simply be in each other’s arms after so long absent them. He thought briefly of asking Yusuf what had taken so long but he quickly dismissed it. It didn’t matter why, what mattered was that they were together again and they would not be parting any time soon, if ever again.

They made their way to the bed where Nicolo curled up in Yusuf’s embrace, Yusuf’s arms tight around him like he could hold him in place by sheer determination. Muscles Nicolo hadn’t even known were tense eased. Eventually, they started to speak, brief tales of what they’d each missed over the years. None of it mattered really, but they said it anyway.

By the time the sun was starting to creep towards the horizon, they’d not moved for hours. Even as his body demanded he move and attend to necessary functions like eating, Nicolo was loathe to leave the bed. Logically he knew that Yusuf was not leaving, that he could cross the room or even leave it and Yusuf would still be here, but something kept him in place.

It’s possible what held him in Yusuf’s arms were in fact Yusuf’s arms. 

“We should eat,” Nicolo told him. “It’s late.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Yusuf told him. “Not for a moment.”

“Oh?” Nicolo raised an eyebrow. “For how long?”

“I haven’t decided yet. How’s forever?”

Nicolo kissed him. He hadn’t intended to start anything, not really, but he couldn’t spend a second longer not kissing this man. What started as a simple press of their lips quickly deepened until Nicolo lost all sense of himself, until there was no point at which he ended and Yusuf began. They were one being, finally whole after so many years.

\---

True to his word, Yusuf did not let him out of his sight. They spent months in Malta and they were hardly ever separate for more than a few moments. Nicolo didn’t mind. He was as eager to keep Yusuf close as Yusuf was to keep him close. 

They were forced to rent a small cottage outside of town after they began to draw too much attention to themselves and the relative seclusion was precisely what they needed. They wrapped themselves around each other in every possible way, often forgoing clothing but never forgetting their words. Their temporary home was hardly ever silent. If they were not speaking of their years apart, ensuring that the other knew everything he had missed so that it was almost as if he had been there himself, then they were reminiscing or recounting old stories or songs. Nicolo had missed Yusuf’s voice as much as he had missed all the rest of the man; he could not forgo it now, no matter how awful his singing was. 

It wasn’t until they heard word of a witch hunt in the north, too many tales of women being burned executed for magic, that they finally left Malta. Once they left, they felt the need to stay close, closer than they had before, the ease they had reforged on the island leaving them once they were back on the continent. It took finding Andy and Quynh and having a purpose and a common enemy again to move past it. The fear of losing each other, of turning around not finding Yusuf there beside him, faded with time. 

\---

They kept the cottage. Every few decades they went back, noted the changes time had wrought on their simple home, forged whatever paperwork was necessary to keep it theirs, and spent months losing themselves in each other again. It was their reprieve from their self appointed mission, from the realities of their immortality. Malta changed slower than the rest of the world, hindered by its island status, and enough of it remained from that first time that for centuries, just stepping off the boat brought them peace. 


End file.
